Linear Algebra - Foundations to Frontiers Review

Linear Algebra - Foundations to Frontiers is an introductory linear algebra course offered by UT Austin through the edX platform that teaches linear algebra in the context of computing. Although the course has a computing component that uses python to illustrate linear algebra algorithms, you can skip all of the programming parts and just go through the main lecture videos and quizzes. Topics covered in the course include vectors, linear transformations, matrix vector operations, matrix multiplication and inversion, vector spaces, orthogonal projection and bases, eigenvalues and eigenvectors.

LAFF requires a major time commitment. Unless you are already familiar with some of the topics, you'll probably spend 5-8 hours a week. It is clear that a tremendous amount of effort went into producing the materials for this course. There are multiple homework exercises after almost every video and most weeks have one or more programming exercises where you implement and visualize linear algebra functions using tools the instructors have created. The instructors were also active on the forums, which was nice to see.

If I were to judge this course solely on the amount of content and quality of exercises, it would be 5/5. That said, I didn’t find the instructor engaging on a human level. Math can be boring; instructors that are excited about the topics they teach can go a long way toward mitigating the dryness. The instructor was robotic in his presentation and I often found the lectures hard to follow. When I decided to watch some of Salman Khan’s linear algebra videos on Khan Academy to review for the final, I found his presentation of the same concepts more engaging and easier to understand. I came out of this course feeling like I didn’t learn as much as I could have because the material is not always presented in a way that is easy to follow and my interest waned from time to time.

LAFF provides everything you need to build a solid foundation in linear algebra—if you are able to remain attentive despite the dry presentation.

I give this course 4 out of 5 stars: Very Good.